Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ A rather complex root in ClassAr, RML today shows only three major values. Of these, ‘(to be/become) a widow(er)’ is said to be dependent on ‘sand’ by indigenous lexicographers, but this seems to be wrong.
▪ The root is only scarcely represented in Sem (only ‘sand’ in modSAr), and not at all in AfrAs. It seems to be an Ar innovation.

–

▪ …
▪ …

▪ Classical dictionaries make RML_2 depend on RML_1: the notion of be(com)ing a widow(er) seems to be a secondary value, developed from an earlier ^† ‘to be(come) poor, needy’, thought to be a metaphorical extension from ‘sand’ (< *‘to look like s.o. who is creeping in the sand’, because s/he is near starvation). But Kogan2011 gives another etymology, see ↗ʔarmalaẗ.
▪ In contrast, RML_3 ‘ramal’, the term for one of the metres of classical poetry, is said to derive from ^†ramala, u (ramalān, ramal, marmal), vb. I, now extinct, with the meaning of (inter al.) ‘to go in a kind of trotting pace, between a walk and a run; to go quickly’ or from RML_4, see below and s.v. ↗ramal).

Other notions attached to √RML and found in ClassAr include:
▪ RML_4 ^†‘to weave (thinly, a mat of palm-leaves, or the like)’: ^†ramala u (raml), vb. I, ? hence also: ‘to ornament with jewels, precious stones, gems, etc.’
▪ RML_5 ^† ‘to have little rain’: ^†ramila a (ramal), vb. I, in ramilat al-sanaẗ : perhaps fig. use of ‘to run short (of provision), become poor’, but it may also be denom. from ramal, pl. ʔarmāl, n., ‘weak rain, little rain’. Connected to RML_1 ‘sand’ ?
▪ RML_6 ^† ‘to lengthen, make long, wide (rope, cord)’: one of the many values of ʔarmala (vb. IV); cf. also ^†ramal ‘redundance, excess (in a thing)’.
▪ RML_7 ^†ramal ‘(black/white) lines, or streakes, upon the legs of the wild cow’; ^†rumlaẗ, pl. rumal, ʔarmāl ‘diversity of colours upon the legs of the wild bull; black line, or streak (upon the back and thighs of a gazelle)’; ʔarmalᵘ ‘(= ʔablaqᵘ) black and white’. – Connected to RML_1 ‘sand’ ?
▪ RML_8 ^†ʔurmūlaẗ ‘stump of (the plant, tree, called) ʕarfaǧ, stock, stem’.

▪ Also from RML_1 ‘sand’ or, more precisely, the denom./caus. vb.s II rammala ‘to put sand into s.th. (food)’ (and hence contaminate) and IV ʔarmala ‘to become sandy; cleave to the sand’ are such specialised meanings as (II) ‘to smear (with blood)’ (probably < ‘sprinkle blood on s.th. like sand’), ‘to adulterate, corrupt, render unsound (speech)’ (<… like contaminating food by put sand into it) and (IV) ‘to be smeared with blood (arrow, the claws of a lion, etc.)’. – The value ‘geomancy’ derives from the fact that a kind of divination was practised by means of figures or lines in the sand.

–

raml رَمْل , pl. rimāl

ID 338 • Sw 78/126 • BP 2095 • APD … • © SG | 15Feb2021

√RML

sand – WehrCowan1979.

Not secured whether the word is Sem or an Ar innovation. If the former, one could follow TB2007 in reconstructing Sem *raml‑ ‘sand’. In ClassAr the derivational register is much richer than in MSA. – The word may also be the etymon of other values of ↗√RML, particularly the complex around ‘widow’ (↗ʔarmalaẗ).

▪ …

▪ TB2007 #3181: SAr rml ‘building sand’ (?), ? Gz ramal ‘sand’ (perhaps from Ar), Mhr rátmǝl ‘to be covered with sand’, ramlēt ‘sand; soil, dust’, Jib C rōl ‘to roll in the dust, to lie in wait’, E rǝmlɛ́t, C rɛ̄l ‘sand’, Soq rǝ́mɔl ‘to lie hidden crouch down’, rémol ‘s’étendre’ (perhaps denom. from ramal ‘sand’; le verbe aurait le sens ‘se coucher sur le sable’).

▪ TB2007 #3181: On account of what seem to be cognates in the modSAr languages (and perhaps also Gz), the authors reconstruct Sem *raml‑ ‘sand’.
▪ For raml possibly being the etymon of other values of √RML, see ↗RML.

–

► ʕilm al-raml, ḍarb al-raml, n., geomancy (divination by means of figures or lines in the sand)
► ʔumm rimāl, n., hyena.

► rammala, vb. II, to sprinkle with sand (s.th., so as to blot it): denom.
► ramlī, adj., sandy, sabulous; sand (in compounds): nsb-adj | sāʕaẗ ramliyyaẗ, n., sandglass, hourglass.
► rammāl, n., geomancer: n.prof., lit. ‘the thrower of sand, sand man’.
► mirmalaẗ, n.f., sandbox: n.loc./instr.

ramal رمَل

√RML

ramal (name of a poetical metre) [6 times fā-ʕi-lā-tun, i.e., – ᴗ – – ] – WehrCowan1979.

Arab lexicographers derive the name of one of the classical metres of poetry from a vb. I, now extinct, ^† ramala u which, apart from meanings relating to ↗raml ‘sand’, in ClassAr also can mean either ‘to weave (thinly, a mat of palm-leaves, etc.)’ or ‘to walk quickly’. From our present state of knowledge it is difficult to decide whether there may be some truth at least to one of these etymologies. The fact that ramal sometimes is classified as an insound, somehow “contaminated” type of poetry, does not bring much more light into the word’s etymology.

▪ …

–

▪ »The name, according to the Arab view, […] is said to mean either “haste” or “woven” (Freytag, Darstellung der arab. Verskunst, p. 136)«.¹
▪ Some theoreticians of Classical verse classify poetry in three main modes—qaṣīd, raǧaz, and ramal —and regard the latter as »incongruous, unsound, or faulty, in structure« (Lane 3-1867). Is ramal then a kind of “contaminated” poetry? In this case, one could think of a relation with ↗raml ‘sand’ from which, among others, rammala (vb. II) ‘to sprinkle s.th. with sand, so as to blot it’, in ClassAr also ‘to put sand into s.th.’, e.g., food, and hence contaminate it, or ‘to adulterate, corrupt, render unsound’ (said of speech), are derived.

1. A. Schaade, art. »Ramal«, in EI¹.

–

►

ʔarmalaẗ أرْملة , pl. ʔarāmilᵘ , ʔarāmilaẗ

√RML

n.f.

widow – WehrCowan1979.

▪ If Kogan2011 is right, the word derives from protSem *ʔalman-at‑ ‘widow’. In this case, indigenous Ar etymology which makes the word dependent on raml ‘sand’ should probably be dismissed. Ar lexicographers regard ‘widow’ as a semantic extension: ‘sand’ > ‘to cleave to the sand’ > ‘to look (so poor and needy) like s.o. who is cleaving to the sand because his traveling provisions are exhausted’ > ‘to be in need of s.o. who provides for o.s.’ >, ‘to be a widow’ (because widows are in need of s.o. to provide for them).
▪ An explanation of this evidence could be that with the gradual mutation, in Ar, of a Sem *ʔalman-at‑ to ʔarmal-aẗ, the original value of *LMN ‘to be without/in need of support’ began to overlap with Ar RML ‘sand’, ‘be covered with sand’, ‘creep in the sand’, ‘look sandy’, etc., so that the explanation of ‘being in need of support’ as derived from ‘being destitute, look poor like s.o. covered with sand’ seemed plausible to the Arab lexicographers.

For the ClassAr dictionaries, the primary value of ʔarmalᵘ (as well as the PA IV, ^†murmil) is (Lane iii-1867) ‘a man whose provisions, or travelling-provisions, have become difficult to obtain, or exhausted, or consumed, and who has become poor’, hence also the more general meaning ‘needy, needing, in want’ and even ‘destitute, indigent’, the pl. ʔarāmilᵘ and ʔarāmilaẗ being applied also to ‘men without women, or women without men, after they have become in need or want’. While the m. does not seem, in ClassAr, to be used (in the sg. at least) with the specific meaning ‘widower’, the f. ʔarmalaẗ can mean ‘woman having no husband’ (in general) and, more specifically, ‘widow’. Wherever ʔarmalᵘ nevertheless means ‘widower’ this is regarded by many authorities to be »cases of deviation from the usual course of speech [▪ …] because the man’s provision does not go in consequence of the death of his wife, since she is not his maintainer, whereas he is her maintainer«.

Kogan2011: Akk almattu ¹ , Ug ʔalmnt, Hbr ʔalmānā, Syr ʔarmaltā ‘widow’

1. CAD: ‘woman without support, widow’

▪ Classical dictionaries make ʔarmalaẗ depend on ↗raml ‘sand’: for them, the notion of be(com)ing a widow(er) seems to be a secondary value, developed from an earlier ^† ‘to be(come) poor, needy’. For the vb. IV ʔarmala, for example, Lane 3 (1867) gives ‘to become sandy’, hence (!) ‘to become poor’ [as though cleaving to the sand], ‘to become s.o. whose travelling-provisions became difficult to obtain, [… or] exhausted, or consumed’, and hence (!) ‘to become an ʔarmalaẗ (said of a woman), i.e., without a husband’ »because of her being in need of one to expend upon her«.
▪ Kogan2011 reconstructs Sem *ʔalman-at‑ ‘widow’ and thinks that the Syr and Ar forms (that show ‑r‑ instead of *‑l‑) »must be related with a mutation of sonorants.«
▪ Given, on the one hand, the wider Sem dimension and the old age of the meaning ‘woman without support, widow’ proper, and, on the other hand, the abundance of instances in ClassAr where the lack of support is associated with the “creeping in the sand” of those miserable who have come in a situation of need, we may be confronting a case of semantic overlapping and contamination here in which two originally distinct roots, *LMN and *RML, have merged, with *LMN mutating, phonologically, to RML and the sense of ‘lack of support’ intersecting and eventually being integrated into that of ‘sand’.

–

► ʔarmala, vb. IV, to become a widower or a widow: denom. (?).
► tarammala, vb. V, = IV.
► ʔarmalᵘ, pl. ʔarāmilᵘ, n., widower: (secondary?) m. of ʔarmalaẗ.
► tarammul, n., widow(er)hood: vn. V.

Permanent link

http://www2.hf.uio.no/common/apps/permlink/permlink.php?app=polyglotta&context=ctext&uid=d8b3f970-06ff-11ee-937a-005056a97067

Choose languages

Choose images, etc.

Choose languages

Choose display